http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
NEXT MONTH the AFL-CIO meets in Los Angeles,
and there is much speculation about whether the
organization will endorse Al Gore or, at the behest
of Bill Bradley supporters, stay uncommitted. Under
the leadership of John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO spent
more money on campaign ads in 1996 and
conducted more-vigorous on-the-ground campaigns
in 1998 than it had in recent years.

But the AFL-CIO and the union movement are not
what they were a generation ago, and they do not
exert their political muscle in the same ways or for
the same goals. Despite occasional well-publicized
organizing victories, union membership continues to
shrink.

The high-water mark of unions came in
1953, when union members accounted for 27
percent of the work force. In 1998, that number was
down to 14 percent. The bulk of union memberships
in 1953 were in giant industrial unions, in the auto,
steel, rubber, and garment industries, and in the
skilled construction trades: These were the main
components of the craft union AFL and the
industrial union CIO, which merged in 1955. Union
hiring halls controlled construction jobs in most big
cities; industrial unions used political clout to get
presidents to pressure companies for generous
contracts.

For a long time, this system seemed to work.
Academic admirers of unions compiled studies
showing that union workers made more money than
nonunion workers. The paradigmatic example was
in the auto industry when the Big Three companies,
pro-union economist John Kenneth Galbraith
argued, could charge any price for their cars and
generate any level of sales through advertising.
Unions helped members by extracting money not
from managers or stockholders but from
consumers.

Shrinking muscle. If that view was ever correct, it
is no longer today. The Big Three, it turned out, did
get competition from foreign firms, and even the
shrewdest advertising couldn't convince Americans
to buy a shoddily assembled Big Three clunker
every couple of years. Economists of all stripes
now agree that virtually no firms have pricing power.
They are disciplined closely by the market and, to
make profits, must cut costs and improve quality.
So there is no way for unions to extract money from
consumers. Instead, they have been forced to agree
to wage cuts and givebacks and the outsourcing of
work to lower-wage firms.

Union grievance
procedures, formed to protect workers from the
time-and-motion studies of the 1930s, now block
almost all modern management techniques. So
private-sector unions are in decline. In 1998 unions
represented only 16 percent of employees in
manufacturing, 26 percent in transportation and
communications, 18 percent in construction, and
12 percent in mining.

In contrast, public-sector unions have been thriving.
Some 37 percent of government workers are union
members. If private-sector unions can't squeeze
money from consumers, public-sector unions have
been able to get it from taxpayers. Soon a majority
of union members will be public employees; already
43 percent are, and John Sweeney's old union, the
Service Employees, gained many new members
from public-sector jobs.

In some ways, this has
strengthened the union movement generally. Since
most corporate CEOs don't have to worry much
about unions, they put little pressure on Bill Clinton
and Democrats to support Republican measures to
allow more-flexible management techniques.
Businesses gave virtually no support when
California Republicans tried to block unions from
using members' political dues for political
campaigns without their permission.

But there are signs that public-sector unionism has
political vulnerabilities, too. Public-sector unions'
incentives are to increase workers' pay and to
insulate them from accountability. Especially
vigilant are the teachers' unions, which for 35 years
have opposed merit pay, teacher testing, and
accountability for results. With a cache of dues
money and articulate members, teachers' unions
have been the most powerful lobbying force in
nearly all state capitals.

But voters are finally
bridling at paying teachers more and getting lousy
results. Support for school choice, charter schools,
and other alternatives has grown sharply. Voters
have become as discontented with the services
provided by public-sector unions in the 1990s as
they were with the automobiles produced by
private-sector unions in the 1970s.

But for the moment, the public-sector unions are
setting the AFL-CIO's course. The United Auto
Workers and other industrial unions want to avoid
any presidential endorsement, in the hope of
gaining concessions on trade issues from Gore and
Bradley. But the public-sector unions, led by the
American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal Employees, are eager to endorse Gore
and appear to have the votes. Gore's "reinventing
government" policies, and the teachers' unions'
recent moves to portray themselves as favoring
reform, are attempts to respond to voters'
discontent with union members' work output without
threatening the power or dues income of the unions.